Scattered Ashes
by Kaist
Summary: There is something strange about Eve. [mostly fem!Evan-centric, time travel, flash fiction]
1. Chapter 1

**I.**

There is something strange about Eve.

Evan has known her long enough to know this. Eve smiles, but it never truly reaches her eyes. She can talk circles around him and he won't realize until much, much later that she manipulated him into defending _her _side of whatever stupid issue they got into an argument over. Or rather, he argued _at_ her while she calmly turned his words around.

Eve is _dangerous _in a sort of way that most have never noticed- she moves with all the ethereal grace of a ghost and her eyes miss nothing and her body is always, always ready to leap into motion despite her relaxed body language. She is much more _thief _than _magician. _Evan has always wondered why she wields a staff. He has been too afraid to ask, after he happened upon her training in secret. She had filched an old staff from the woodshed and snuck out in the dead of night to a field full of monsters. Eve had _decimated _them with a single spell. For the first time in his life he had experienced terror- which he hadn't liked, not one bit. People shouldn't have to be _scared _of their siblings, so he'd hid all that fear deep down where not even she would be able to detect it.

And for the life of him, he can't remember _when _she became a force of nature, unstoppable and unbreakable, rather than his baby twin sister who was born just minutes after he was. The best time he can think of, besides her secret training, is when a fox had nearly bitten Utah in the back of the knee. She'd kicked the fox away with speed faster than she should have been capable of.

It's a stark reminder to find out (when he comes home with a new baby dragon to find her in a coma with damaged vocal chords from screaming loud enough to wake the dead) that she is very much _human_. All of them- Pops, Mom, even unfailingly snarky Utah, and himself- are shaken, and it shows as they all glance uneasily at her bedroom door the next morning.

Almost like they hope she's going to walk out at any moment, characteristically lost in her own little world of thought, and look up and blink with a hint of mischievousness lurking in her eyes at their expressions.

But as reality dictates, no such thing happens.

**II.**

Evan feels somewhat guilty for leaving when Eve is like this. He knows she would've wanted to come with him, and he sighs as Mir flutters around him impatiently. The dragonling (as Evan has decided to refer to his new companion as) wants to pull heroic feats and make their names known across the lands and Evan wonders faintly just where he got the notion from.

Utah is gazing at the house with worry when Evan and Mir pass. He doesn't even glance at them.

Somewhere deep within him, Evan _does _want to travel the land. He wants to see the world and help people, just like the stories Mom told him and Eve before bedtime when they were young. But Eve is in a coma and the world has turned upside-down within the space of a few hours and he has a _dragon _as his lifelong partner and how could he possibly travel the land without his twin by his side?

He couldn't. There's only one solution he can think of to that: find a way to wake her. And if Mir insists on them doing some good deeds on the side, well, that won't do any harm.

So he nods to himself with resolve and Mir looks up from his babbling with curious, inhuman eyes. Evan smiles at Mir and Mir responds, if confusedly, with a dragony little smile of his own. "Let's go, Mir. We're going to save Eve."

Deep down he can admit to himself that he's scared. He'd never thought about leaving home before he met Mir, but now he has a reason to- and he can feel something strange and unfamiliar welling up inside him as he takes his first steps outside of Henesys. With surprise he realizes it's determination.

He'll save his sister, no matter the cost.

**III.**

The first time Evan meets Master Thief Phantom he's unsure of who this rich blond man is and why there are shadows and pain in his violet eyes that seem so similar to the look that Eve gets sometimes when she thinks nobody's looking. It's like she's living in a waking nightmare, a dream full of sorrows and regrets, and Evan gets the feeling this Phantom lives life in that state constantly.

Then the name clicks and he now realizes that Phantom is, indeed, Master Thief Phantom, one of five heroes who saved the world from the Black Mage more than a century ago. Hope wells within him- perhaps these people can do something for Eve, know some obscure branch of magic that will allow them to wake her up.

So he smiles, bright as the sun at the man who seems drenched in moonlight, and pretends not to see the pain spike in those eyes. He takes his arm (and _doesn't _take no for an answer) and has to physically drag him over to the other three heroes so that Lady Cygnus can offer them all greetings and thank-yous. Phantom could probably escape if he really wanted to, but Evan would like to think that Eve's unintentional lessons in manhandling someone's forearm with what seemed to be a grip of iron had taught him well.

Mir is busy somewhere, playing in the forests of Ereve, but Evan gets another feeling- this one distinct- that his dragon is laughing at him. His expression is unconsciously somewhat miffed as he communicates with the errant dragon and Mercedes looks upon the scene of Phantom trying to get away from a dragon master while said dragon master paid absolutely no attention to the master thief with painful familiarity. For a second she fancies she can see an older man behind the young boy, one with a calm (although amused) smile and amused cerulean eyes and her heart aches unbidden.

Freud had been the glue that bound their shaky group together. He had been the rock who never broke, the confidant in which Phantom found healing, Luminous solace, Aran understanding, and herself friendship. He had been brave and firm and almost too good.

Too good to live, whispers a part of her, and the elven queen silences it.

* * *

**Hello. This is a major AU, and thus I apologize if the things I do with the way the Maple World works are outside the realm of feasibility. This is also flash fiction- this is because this was a little side project started in my free time and grew into a fanfic. I'm still quite inexperienced in the lovely area of fanfiction, despite being an avid reader of it for many years, so I hope to improve. If you are so inclined, I would appreciate feedback on this. Blunt honesty is good for me.**


	2. Chapter 2

**IV.**

She is drifting.

She's not fully aware of where she is. At some point, she thinks she might be home- moonlight through glass windows and walls of white trimmed with gold stare back at her curiously blank face. The gentle hum of an engine working is nearly silent in the night. The hall she stands in is empty.

_That isn't home, _says an insistent part of her. It was quiet when she first found herself like this. It's been growing steadily louder, giving advice with a peculiar tone of voice she can't quite place. _Not any longer. _And she moves onwards (or is it backwards?) and melts back into the stream- for a stream this seems to be- and moves everywhere and nowhere, indistinct and congruous.

Cold white snow and warm hearths mix equally with burning jungles and harsh, arid desert. She is no part of any of it; she simply does not exist- except to watch.

_No, _the advice-giving part of her says insistently. _You are part of it!_

But it's being silly, because she has always watched. Always.. hasn't she?

She wanders away from the moonlit lake she has found herself at almost casually. It doesn't matter to her. Abruptly, she finds herself in a place of white. She frowns- this is no fun. There is nothing of interest. She turns to leave again but finds white all around her, white and white and white, except for the desk and the thing sitting at it.

_Person, _she realizes with dull surprise. _That's a person._

Suddenly the person chuckles and looks up. Blue eyes meet cerulean. "Yes, I am."

True surprise makes itself known now, and she can feel herself warming up as if she's been frozen cold in an El Nath blizzard. She catches herself. El Nath?

With something like the sound of a dam breaking memories begin to pour through a barrier she hadn't realized existed in her mind and she realizes something important.

"I am Eve," she says, as if she hadn't expected it. How silly. She's never been anything but Eve. How had she thought any differently?

"Yes, you are," Freud says with a small smile, hand supporting his head. He gestures for her to sit down on the chair that has suddenly popped in front of the desk out of nowhere. "You've been wandering for a long time. Please, take a seat."

She does with a certain amount of bewildered shock. "...What happened?"

His face becomes serious. His next words throw her for a loop. "Your soul bond was broken."

Soul bond.

Soul... bond?

"Mir!" she realizes with panic. The dragon she'd raised from a dragonling, her _partner _who she shared everything with, the deepest parts of her soul and the ugliest- the being her soul is so intertwined with- gone?

"Evan found him and touched his shell," Freud explains, face carefully blank. Evan and Eve are, after all, his successors. He loves one just as much as he does the other. "The moment he did, it broke your bond with Mir... which meant that your two souls were forcefully torn apart. Shards of your soul have been wandering around the stream of time. It took me a lot of work to put you back together."

Eve notices, all of the sudden, how translucent Freud is. He smiles at her. _Don't ask, _that smile says. She sags against the chair, running her hand through her hair. "I'm sure the cracks were already large enough," she mutters, half to herself.

Freud says nothing, aside from making a rather neutral noise. Her soul was in a sorry condition when he finally managed to piece most of it back together, but he's not about to tell her that she's more whole than she was before. They lapse into silence before the dragon master claps his hands together. It startles her and she is on her feet in less than a second, hand scrabbling for a weapon at her back that isn't there.

"Peace," Freud says. He's not surprised at her reaction. "It's time for you to go back."

She looks at him doubtfully. "How do you know?"

"You can't stay here forever," he says simply. If it had been Evan standing before him, he might have spoken some bit of wisdom to the boy. But Eve is a different case, although she was much the same in the beginning. Now she's far outgrown any guidance he might give. "Don't you have a mission? Stay here too long, and you lose your chance to go back."

Her expression speaks for itself- equal parts reluctance mixed with exhaustion and apprehension. "See you, then," she says casually, standing up. And she will. She's stood here before, in front of this desk, in varying states of sanity and determination. It is the place she is returned to between loops. She turns away and begins making her way to the faint pinprick of light they can both see in the distance.

"Please stay alive," he calls after her. She gives him a noncommittal noise in response. They both know that sooner or later she'll be back again- another failure, another try. He tries to hope that she'll succeed, but even he has lost count of how many times she's looped.

Freud turns back to his work. It just figures that he'd get saddled with the job of secretary of the afterlife.

**V.**

She groans as she awakens, easing herself up on her elbows, and then shuts her eyes with a hiss because _where is that light coming from? _Eve feels as though she has spent an entire night drinking alcohol after a battle, except she hasn't because she isn't twenty yet and there isn't any war in this timeline. Some drunk soldiers were worse than useless. Eve had been surprisingly effective when inebriated.

She hears a noise but doesn't feel inclined to acknowledge it as she silently marvels at just how much recovering from her soul being fragmented feels like recovering from near-mortal wounds _and _a hangover. Freud has certainly pieced her together well, if it merely feels like this and not blinding white-hot agony. Something pokes her in the side and her eyes snap open to glare at the offending finger until she realizes it's trembling and slowly trails the arm up to the face of the owner.

Evan is staring at her with disbelieving hope, young eyes wide and round and so expressive she feels almost like she can see _his _soul. How long had she been wandering about time itself? She looks away, somewhat uncomfortable. Then he's embracing her with his head buried in her shoulder, something suspiciously like tears dampening the pajamas she's wearing.

Hesitantly her hands come around to his back, patting it. His grip on her tightens like he's afraid she'll fall back into another coma if he lets go and guilt flickers across her face when she realizes this. She may not have known this boy before, but he's become her brother.

Then she looks up and around the room because she _knows _she sensed another presence somewhere around here. Her eyes connect with a pair of violet eyes in the shadows and she freezes, motions halting, because suddenly all she can see is _bloodbloodbloodblood everywhere too much why why why why-_

The moment, barely a second, passes. Phantom, leaning against the wall next to the door, is clean and pristine (as he always is) and she _is not _supposed to know who he is, because farmgirls don't normally know about heroes of centuries past. But he is alive and whole and not smiling at her as he dies in her arms. That's enough for now.

"It seems you're finally awake." Phantom says when she says nothing, trying to collect herself. Now he is smiling that light, empty smile that means nothing and something inside her feels a rush of empathy for him.

It's a struggle to even nod at him. Guilt and sorrow rise up within her and she wants to apologize on bent knee for all the times she's failed to save him, failed _him. _His smooth voice washes over her and she almost sobs because of the memory that rises suddenly, a warm smile and his arms around her and his forehead against hers. With effort she pushes it down and opens her mouth to respond, but finds herself coughing instead. Her mouth feels drier- _and _rougher- than the paper her Pops uses to make his timber smooth.

He moves over to the bedside table, holding out a cup of water to her which she takes gratefully with one hand. His face is impassive, but she can read it easily. Some concern and empathy, and the slightest hint of impatience. She realizes that he must be training Evan in what he knows of Freud's battle style. Now _she _is shaking finely (a sort of dull pain flits through her and she tries not to acknowledge the feeling for what it is) and though Evan's sobs have quieted and he is now simply soaking in her presence, she knows he can feel it. She sips the water and manages to rasp out a rusty 'thank you'.

Phantom shakes his head. "It's no trouble."

They lapse into silence once more because what is Eve supposed to say? She knows she has to watch her words around him. He is a smart man, trained to recognize clues in words and body language and look underneath and between the lines. If there is anyone who has a chance of figuring out the truth, it is Phantom. Her problem is exacerbated by feelings she's tried to kill, feelings that just won't go away- but the truth remains and once upon a time he loved her and died protecting her.

Evan shifts to sit beside her, for once not all that inclined to speak. His eyes are red and his nose is a little runny but nobody says anything about that, because Mir has just blown through the door and Eve's breath hitches for the barest second. Mir is a little baby dragon again, an innocent and idealistic toddler. She instinctively reaches for his presence, warm and comforting, and is met only with cold. She chances an aside glance at Evan and can tell he is basking in the warmth that is the dragonling's presence.

_Oh, _she remembers. Her throat tightens and she blinks rapidly. _The soul bond..._

She smiles and it is made of plastic. But neither Evan nor the overexcited Mir notice that or the hesitation in her actions as she reaches out to pat the dragonling between his eyes and pretend she doesn't know every last thing about him.

Phantom wonders, idly, at the fact that Evan didn't see the sheer depth of the pain that existed in Eve's eyes at that moment.

* * *

**I suppose it goes without saying that this is fairly AU. And catering to my shipping preferences. Phantom's quite difficult to write, ne?**


	3. Chapter 3

**VI.**

Phantom's first thought when seeing the girl finally awake goes something along the lines of being relieved that he'll have the chance to finish instructing Evan and get the boy out of his sight sooner. A living reminder of Freud doesn't just itch at his open wounds, it tears them freshly raw. Having someone like that around, someone who can (and did) sway him a bit too successfully to their case, is dangerous. He'd caved into Evan's request for help when he'd been looked in the eye and saw Freud instead of the boy- not that he would ever admit it. There are many things others just don't need to know about him, least of all Evan who is _very definitely _more perceptive than he appears to be.

The second thought that hits him then is, _Is she looking at me? _The third is realization that yes, she is, and her eyes are exactly the same shade as Evan's. But her face is softer, more curved, almost like-

_No. _He's not about to think of _her_ right now. Those thoughts are reserved for quieter times, moments _alone _on the Lumiere when he doesn't have the weight of having to meet two pairs of Freud's eyes or memories of the scholarly dragon master flashing across his consciousness in short, staccato bursts of color and sound that are clouded by the pain of regret. And he'd really rather have those memories not here at the moment, either, so he speaks to break the silence. "It seems you're finally awake, miss Eve."

She nods at him, jerkily, and is that the glint of tears in her eyes? All he did was make a comment. He frowns the slightest bit. It could not have been anything in his statement that made her react that way- no, they're borne of something else. She tries to open her mouth to speak, then, but nothing comes out except coughing and Phantom realizes it must've been a while since anyone got her something to drink or eat.

He spots the cup that Evan had set on the bedside table earlier, when Evan had sent a pulse of magic through her body in a careful, controlled manner that they thought may have been able to help. Steps making the barest of noise on the rustic wooden floor, he makes his way to the table and hands her the cup. His eyes catalogue the way she's shaking ever-so-slightly and Evan's subtly looser grip, watch the emotions flicker in her eyes when she downs it in one go and thanks him in a voice that clearly hasn't seen use for at least a week. The more he watches the more he realizes there is something just slightly _off _about Eve, something he can't quite place.

He shakes his head, mouth automatically releasing a response that he doesn't even hear. His mind is whirring now, trying to figure it out. Her posture is stiff when Evan slides off of her to sit beside her best he can on the bed. She sits up fully, and whatever either of the twins may have said is forgotten when Mir (the little bundle of scales, nothing like Afrien but perhaps one day, with time-) bursts into the room and begins chattering at Evan excitedly while the boy tries to introduce the dragon to his sister.

His eyebrows raise at the reaction she has. It's subtle, barely noticeable, like the way a trained professional would hide their emotions. But to Phantom it's there and he's found another puzzle to solve, the mystery of one farmgirl that he fully expected to be _just like _her brother despite his tales about her skill in combat (probably highly exaggerated). She has never met the dragon before, seeing as she'd been in a coma before she could meet him. Why, then, does he cause such a pained reaction? It's like her entire demeanor has just changed and her brother hasn't even noticed.

Amidst the sea of his thoughts and the idea of a new challenge, he pretends not to acknowledge the fact that he's desperate to get away from the ghosts that haunt him.

**VII.**

After finally managing to steal away from Evan, who has kept her in his sights almost to the point of obsession ever since he dragged her along on his and Mir's journey, she sighs in relief and tries not to sag against the building she has hidden behind. Then she rubs at her arm, because Evan grips _hard _and she has no idea where he got that from.

Eve sits against the wall and looks out over the rolling fields, watching the mushrooms hop about in the distance. Henesys holds far too many memories for her to be entirely comfortable, but then again, _all _of the cities hold memories she'd rather not remember. Not that it would do her any good anyways. She now always wrote down what had happened in the previous loop after it ended; it provided a point of reference for her. It was potentially incriminating evidence that could lead someone else to the truth of her existence, but somewhere down the line she'd learned how to write it in code. Nobody alive except her would be able to decipher it, and she has had years and years and years to perfect her system.

This loop is different from the others, dangerously so. Never before has she had a counterpart; practically everyone else in the Maple Alliance, yes, but never her. There has been Phantom and Phantomia and Luminous and Lumina and Aran and, well, Aran (their shared name was, apparently, related to the customs of their people) and even Mercedes had had a male counterpart before.

Eve can only wonder what the future of this loop holds, if there is any chance of her completing her mission in this time. Just the presence of Evan means that she can assume nothing but the absolute basics: loyalties (Magnus, as always, has none) remaining the same, and Cygnus' memories of the original timeline.

Cygnus knew exactly what had gone wrong the first time. But she never remembered the loops themselves, assuming that Eve had only gone back once. Every _single _time. It had gotten to be too much and Eve had kept contact with the woman sparse unless absolutely necessary. Getting her into contact with the Silent Crusade had been a very helpful thing in this loop, giving Eve the opportunity to get out and investigate the status of the Maple World.

Eve still needs to report in to Bastille and Cygnus. She is working for both parties, as an unofficial representative of the Crusade to Ereve and vice versa. Cygnus has a head for politics; showing support in the discreet manner that the Crusade values has landed them even more solidly on the side of the Alliance than before.

And if nothing else, Cygnus serves as a reminder for _why _nobody else should find out about Eve's time traveling. Only one who has been through the same uniquely hellish situation as she would possibly be able to understand, or so she thinks. And she would never- never, _ever- _wish the fate she has resigned herself to on any other being, even if she loathed their very existence. It is her duty, her dues to her dead, and when she has finally created a future in which they all live then she will have completed her task.

Cygnus may know, but she could not understand. Freud is dead and can't help her. The only time she has contact with him is between loops, at any rate- in her venture, Eve is alone.

She stands and begins making her way through Henesys proper. The Empress is likely waiting for her- it would not do to be late.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees a flash of blond hair and white clothing. Eve grimaces and hides herself in the shadows best she can, increasing her pace, although her concealment hardly holds a candle to what a regular thief can do. Phantom has taken far too much interest in her, seems to have found in her a new puzzle to solve. She likes the master thief, and in an earlier time she might've welcomed his curiosity and toyed with him, but now she is old and tired and cannot let emotions that have no place anymore play havoc with her decisions.

_Look at me, _she thinks, countenance bleak. _Doing my best to avoid everyone while trying to save them. _

Eve likes to think, now, that she can understand why Phantom flinched every time he saw her in the beginning. The way he flinches at Evan now. Looking at Evan is like looking at Freud, but younger, happier, without any of the familiarity or acknowledgement of the past. Because there was none. None of those experiences, those hardships, happy moments, even day-to-day life- had happened.

And that was painful, like a wound that just _wouldn't heal. _Eve has had experience with those. She's had to live it over and over again and all they ever remember are half-forgotten dreams, nightmares, of times that never were. They always assume it's only their psyche. She remembers distinctly one loop where she'd _tried _to tell them the truth of their dreams- all four of her former companions had, in their own way, laughed the idea off. Eve never spoke of it again, not until that loop had ended the exact same way the previous one had (protecting them, always, in those days when she'd been desperate not to see any harm whatsoever come to them and often gotten herself injured fatally for it) and only Aran had realized what the truth had been, far too late for it to do any good.

Then she'd woken up in the next loop as a child who ran into Luminous mistakenly when in Ellinia and met his eyes, the eyes of a complete stranger somewhat irked that a child had gotten into his path, and felt something break inside her.

So, perhaps, her avoidance is justified.

* * *

**Freud's... interesting, to play around with. He's a character who has perhaps a greater impact in fanon than in canon, but we all know Nexon's stupid with its storylines and characters. I haven't played much further than 74 on Phantom's storyline and about 100 on Aran's, though, so I definitely don't know all the extra details in the game lore. Personally, I think of him as having been closest to Mercedes and Phantom. And Afrien, of course. He had to have been ridiculously diplomatic to form a pact with the king of dragons. Noble and heroic, to want to save the world from the Black Mage, not to mention courageous. In any case, he has a quiet, although fairly important, role in this fic.**


	4. Chapter 4

**VIII.**

She ducks and leaps and expels mana in a slashing motion; her blood is singing and it has been some time since she felt so _alive. _It is a pleasure to settle into the hectic rhythm of battle. In battle she simply _is, _and she dances and flits to and fro and casts spells from the shadows. She can forget, she can let go, she is not tortured and burdened by endless loopsandloopsandloops that never end.

With a final, skillful dash she lands on a grassy platform free of monsters. She sits down, breathing even. She will need to move on to another area soon- these monsters have ceased to become challenging. Casting her eye lazily about the monster-infested clearing she is somehow unsurprised to find that Phantom is standing at the edge of it, out of reach of the monsters. She can hardly see what his expression is from this far off, but he looks... impressed.

She sighs, and returns her attention to the white potion she's drinking in hopes that he might go away. This Phantom's curiosity about her has lead to his suddenly-constant presence in this loop. Eve should be more concerned than she is. Aside from some worry about the increased interest limiting her movements, she's confident that she can head him off with misdirections and half-truths.

(She ignores the part of her that asks, _can you really? _She will when it comes down to it. There's a reason she doesn't let anybody find the truth of herself and her mission.)

Phantom suddenly sits beside her but she very pointedly faces the other way; it seems that every time they meet (far too frequently for her) he asks question after question. He's an annoyance, really, even though he's one of the people she's trying to save. An annoyance with an insatiable curiosity and a nice hat.

She doesn't believe that for one second. Her attempts to convince herself are half-hearted at best.

"I'm hurt," Phantom says, tilting his head at her. She can see it out of the corner of her eyes. "You don't want my company?"

"You ask _questions," _she replies with a fair amount of disgruntled irritation. Were she in any other circumstances, she would likely take pleasure in his company. With rough motions she takes a roll of bandages out of her pockets and tears off a strip with her teeth, wrapping the bandage around the wound on her upper forearm. The white potion has merely stopped the bleeding- it won't prevent the cut from opening up again.

He hums as a response, but his eyes observe her activity with calculating assessment. Eve moves like a soldier, knows how to conserve potentially life-saving supplies. He's seen many, many adventurers in his time and he can easily declare that less than half of them know how to use their healing supplies in the manner the brown-haired girl does. This only adds evidence to the hypothesis he has tentatively created; proof that life can be stranger than fiction.

Because the girl, whether she realizes it or not, lets on through her actions a hint of who she truly is. She has a terrible sorrow lurking in the back of her eyes, and her smile is just as fake as his. Something lingers in the air around her- the heavy almost-aura of a master magician, one he recognizes from Freud and Grendel and even Alcaster.

The way she fights is more like a dance and Phantom finds himself _recognizing _some of her motions. He knows he's never taught anyone his fighting method, so what is she doing with several moves that look like they were inspired by his?

He's half inclined to ask, but he knows she wouldn't answer. No, with Eve getting information is like drawing blood out of a stone. It requires subtlety and careful timing; the most he's gotten out of her have been _reactions, _not words. And it only tantalizes his growing curiosity. Eve is a bundle of contradictions and skills that just shouldn't be possible, not at the age she is and the life she's experienced.

According to Evan, their home life was idyllic and focused only on the worries of the farm. Then again, when he'd been asked about Eve, Phantom had gotten only some pithy, generalized information. Then Evan had changed the subject, chattering on about Mir. Whatever Eve's secrets were, Evan was protective enough of her that he would say nothing.

Eve pauses in her motions. She glances at him quickly and turns again, but not so quickly that he doesn't catch it.

"Expecting something?" Phantom asks, determined to have some semblance of a conversation. He raises an eyebrow. He dislikes too much quiet, but he's more interested in observing her at the moment. However skilled, even a master actor cannot hide everything. He will draw more information about her from the things she does than he will her words.

"No," she lies, inspecting her work and adjusting the bandage where needed. If she is perfectly honest- and of course she never is, she learned from the best of thieves- his silence unnerves her. She does not like silence as she did before. It leaves her too much time with her own thoughts and memories.

She stands and stretches. Fighting monsters is easier than fighting nightmares, and she will take any method she can get to forget the worst of it all. The slight shudder that passes through her frame does not go unnoticed, but before Phantom can say anything, she has jumped from the platform and begun decimating the hordes of monsters that roam around the area.

**IX.**

The sight of one of the Heroes on Ereve is not in and of itself an unusual sight. Alliance meetings occur on a fairly regular basis, and oftentimes they speak with Empress Cygnus about something or another.

What's _un_usual is the sight of the youngest of them all, the one with the dragon, running around Ereve like a chicken with its head cut off. When questioned, the boy would only say that he was looking for his sister. But apparently he'd met with no success, and he seemed almost frantic to the usual residents of the island in the sky.

Eve, when finished speaking with the Empress, steps out of the gazebo to see her twin brother looking under a box and Mir floating beside him, looking at the ground underneath said box with worry. She blinks and decides not to question it, or how he found her- perhaps a quest has sent him here? In any case, she still has things to do today.

There is a secluded corner of Ereve that she has taken to visiting each time she comes here in this loop, a small little enclave that she's turned into a garden. She's carefully cultivated orange flowers, a kind that only grow on the Empress' home turf, and they should have started blooming perhaps a week or two ago. The path is beginning to show, since she was asked to start giving weekly reports directly to Cygnus. Eve suspects that Cygnus only makes her give direct reports about the states of the towns to keep Eve from forgetting how much time has passed.

She doesn't like the look of pity she receives, but the Empress cares enough to do the little things and Eve will let her have her way. The last time she tried to get Cygnus to stop, the woman had only upped the ante of her efforts.

Nodding to herself and putting those thoughts away, she makes her way to a nearby stall and purchases a bouquet of the ever-common white flowers. They are the cheapest way to make a white potion, seeing as the forests around Ellinia hold copious amounts of them. It isn't much, but she has made it habit to buy some before going. She gives the stall owner her customary bland smile. The old man blinks, before smiling back and waving her off.

_Strange, _Eve thinks. She continues on her way, successfully dodging one worried brother-and-dragon and an elf queen. _...It's starting to seem like they're stalking me. _All five Heroes (including her brother) had taken some sort of interest in her and were all falling over themselves to find her. That was a little amusing, but if she wasn't careful, it would limit her movements. Any further and she wouldn't be able to do a thing to stop the World Tree from being corrupted.

Her nose wrinkles at the thought of Phantom deliberately inciting their interest to get more answers out of her. It would be just like the master thief.

So far, there were two things she'd determined that absolutely _could not _happen. Alice, the Transcendent of Life, had to remain free of any taint that might corrupt her or allow the Black Wings to set a trap for the Cygnus Knights. Cygnus knew not to go near, but inevitably, one of her commanders would. Her empowering link with the Knights would corrupt her and the other Knights. Ereve would fall, and with it the Maple World.

And secondly, none of the four Heroes that had survived their centuries-long sleep could die. She was almost certain the clause only existed because she had been desperate to save all four of them when she'd created a pact with Rhinne. Desires were powerful, after all, and Eve's will had been one of her defining factors. _Had been. _The experiences she'd had had changed her. She wasn't even sure how long ago her original timeline had been, though it remained branded into her memories. It was all she had left to hold on to, and some days it felt like she was still in it.

She closes her eyes briefly. Rhinne slept on because of the pact. None could reach her, not Eve and not the Black Mage. The Transcendence of Time was enclosed in an absolutely impenetrable location: time itself. And so Eve was trapped in an eternal loop of the same seven years, never succeeding, always waking up to see that _cursed _farmhouse ceiling.

Oh, how she _loathes _that ceiling.

Once she reaches her destination, she places her bouquet against a tree and goes to kneel in the flowers. She picks at the weeds that have sprung up while she is away with a determination she rarely displays, thinking and plotting.

Her throat tightens as a very real thought occurs to her. Cygnus had hinted that she would begin sending the other five on missions to investigate the Mystic Gates. The Silent Crusade had been struggling to keep up with the number of Gates that had popped up around the Maple World, yes, but for all five of them to be going...? Mir, too, that made six, and Cygnus had said something about agents of the Crusade needing to instruct the heroic group on investigation.

"Meddling woman," she mutters under her breath. Of _course _some members will have to help out the Heroes who had never investigated the gates before. It was just _such _a coincidence that Eve was one of the most accessible, friendly and _actually helpful_ members (Crow would just as likely toss them into the Gate than help them through it, and that might scar poor Evan), wasn't it? She grits her teeth. "Can't believe her..."

Eve has been well and truly backed into a corner and the Empress pulled it off in a way _Eve _herself would. _Note: She is more observant than I give her credit for, _Eve thinks to herself, grumbling as she tends to a particularly pitiful-looking, small flower.

Cygnus, sitting near Shinsoo, wonders if her plans will succeed. Considering what the brown-haired girl has gone through, Cygnus believes that it will do her some good to interact with her former friends.

It's the least she can do in apologizing for the past.

The Empress smiles, and turns to consult with Neinheart about today's schedule.

* * *

**Since the whole plot of Maplestory hasn't exactly been revealed yet, but there ****_is _****a clear distinction between the false future in the Temple of Time and the actual future of the Maple World, let me say this: The original timeline that Eve comes from is one where that false future, with a few changes, was the real future. Phantom and Evan have a somewhat bigger role in the plot than the other three Heroes (and Freud) do, for various reasons, one of those being I haven't played Aran in a long, long time (about the time she came out in SEA) and I haven't played Mercedes or Luminous. **


	5. Chapter 5

**X.**

It's hard for Eve to breathe.

Somehow- _somehow- _and she's nearly _positive _that Cygnus has something to do with it- she has been finagled into dinner. On the Lumiere. With four people she has fought and bled and lived with and an innocent boy and _her _dragon who isn't hers any more.

The sardonic part of her is surprised that Luminous and Phantom haven't picked a fight with each other yet. The rest of her is too busy trying not to hyperventilate at the sight of too-familiar walls and the ornate dining hall they sit in and oh, _Goddess, _even the smell of the place. The people around her aren't helping. All of them in one place is a painful reminder of better days. She takes a bite of her food to hide the shaky breath she has begun to intake.

Phantom's been keeping an eye on her throughout dinner, she knows. Eve tries to listen in on the conversation, tries to smile. All that's coming out is a curl of the lips that's more empty than not. The food is delicious and extravagant, as it always is, but she hardly tastes it. She supposes she can only be thankful that Mercedes and Luminous are more interested in conversing with Evan, Aran and the ever-excitable Mir than herself. Considering their almost-certainly-exacerbated-by-Phantom interest in her, it's a relief to not be the center of attention. Phantom speaks up on occasion, but he seems more interested in watching. How unusual. He's been thoroughly unusual ever since she last encountered him during her training.

Phantom always has liked not being predictable. It's almost like his questions aren't led by curiosity any more, but she knows the master thief (or at least his basic thought processes) and she knows better.

Whatever the case, she is grateful when Phantom finally decides to take pity on her and discreetly nods at the door she knows is an alternate path to the deck. Eve excuses herself quietly and forces herself to look a little green at the edges; feigned airsickness is as good a getaway as any. Luminous has a slight frown on his face as he glances back and forth between the master thief and Eve, but turns back to the conversation when faced by a question from Mir.

She leans on the railing, heaving a sigh of relief at the cool wind. The urge to panic is gone with the presence of the others, but the sight of white on gold still brings a sort of indescribable pang to her chest. This place is filled with memories of _him, _and it's almost too much to see someone who _is _him but isn't, walk the halls and smirk and joke just like _he _did. Wear his face, use his body, but have none of his memories.

But he still calls himself _Phantom, _because this Phantom is _a _Phantom, but none of these Phantoms over the loops have been _her _master thief. He is dead and gone, just like the rest of them, and now only she remains and tortures herself with their memory.

She catches herself. It's not exactly fair to think of this Phantom as a fake. He is still Phantom, even if he isn't the same person she loved. But she _has _to keep them all alive, hers or not, if only for the memory of her friends. She'd promised. It was such a shame that all of them had a tendency to try and get themselves killed as creatively as possible.

Eve sighs again and stares out at the endless expanse of darkening, violet-blue sky with its twinkling stars and blazing moon. She can see the dark shapes below the Lumiere, the clouds rolling above, and with a jolt she realizes she can recognize this feeling. It's homesickness, something she hasn't felt in a long time, and Eve can only wonder where it came from. She's been on the Lumiere in plenty of other loops. It's certainly not her home any longer.

"Meso for your thoughts?" Phantom asks, arriving out of nowhere.

"You'd just steal it anyways," she says immediately, not a hint of doubt in her tone.

He fakes a hurt expression. "You wound me."

"..." She doesn't have a response to that. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye- his uniform is still white and pristine, thank goodness. He opens his mouth to say something and weariness hits her like a tidal wave-_ questions and questions and questions- _and she can't answer, not like this. She holds up a hand. "Not tonight, Phantom."

He shuts his mouth. And then he takes another look at her, a long one, and she tries to hide all evidence of her bone-deep exhaustion. But it isn't working and she's spent far, far too many nights like this, all the regrets and sorrows she's ever had coming up to the surface in the span of a short few hours, and she can't- _can't- _let him ask anything, or she'll let it all out and that can't happen.

It hasn't been this bad in several loops.

Eve jumps at the hand that settles on her shoulder, and forcibly shoves her _defend yourself! _instinct down. It's only Phantom, violet eyes glittering with something a little like understanding. "Ah," she swallows, trying not to show her surprise at him honoring her request, much less trying to provide some form of sympathy.

When was the last time she'd had human contact? Her family had stopped around the time she'd begun training herself, in this loop.

She leans into his touch ever-so-slightly. Phantom wasn't usually so friendly. It took years to beat down the barriers he'd put up around himself. The only reason she can think of for something like this happening is that she's been letting something slip unwittingly, something that has struck this Phantom. She's not sure what's going on beneath that face, not as well as she thought she did, but his hand is comforting and it feels warmer than she's been in months.

"...Thanks," Eve says. Reluctantly, she draws away from his hand. It's ridiculous to think that the already-cold evening wind is any more bracing than it was before, but somehow, it feels like it.

Phantom's arm returns to his side. The moon adds highlights to his light blond hair, and she realizes that he isn't wearing his hat.

_Just an annoyance now, _she thinks out of nowhere. Her lips twitch briefly. _The hat gives him extra intelligence. Lets him come up with more questions._

With the direction her thoughts are taking, she probably needs to sleep. As a soldier, she'd learned to take rest any time she could get it. All the better to keep her body going, and usually, the extent of her exhaustion left her without dreams. She sits down on the deck, rather comfortable, and no longer tries to fight the building heaviness making her eyelids drift shut. Her last thought before her body sends itself to sleep is the realization that she feels almost- safe.

Phantom looks down at her, scrutinizing the girl. He's almost as surprised at his actions as she herself seemed to be. It's been five months since Eve woke from her coma, and he's encountered her by accident as often as he has purposefully sought her out. She goes around the Maple World for the Silent Crusade, he knows, but she also uses all his old haunts for training. Even the ones he's never told _anyone _about.

He shakes his head. Her mystery can wait for another time- it wouldn't do to leave a young girl out on the deck in the cold wind. She might catch cold. Evan wouldn't mind his sister staying the night, if she slept on the extra bed in his room. Mir would probably decide to curl up around the dragon master in training.

It occurs to him, once she is safely settled in Evan's room, that he has begun to count the brown-haired girl among people who matter to him. His thoughts race as he settles back at the table and makes a smooth jibe at Luminous that causes Aran and Evan to laugh and Mercedes to hide a smile behind her mouth. Luminous snarks back with a fairly impressive scowl, but there isn't any heat behind their words. That's saved for closed doors and Freud's absence and anger at its boiling point.

He's well aware of his own bonds with other people. He has so very few, after all, and he keeps a vigilant watch on anything about him that goes more than skin-deep. All the better to maintain his image. Gaston is his butler, a man he's worked with for many years and holds in high esteem. Luminous, Mercedes and Aran are his comrades-by-circumstance and he's quite sure that had the Black Mage never existed- had Freud never recruited all of them in his determination to save the world and forced them all to spend time with each other until they could hold a civil conversation with each other and actually _care _about each other, actual friendships notwithstanding- he never would've dreamed of befriending any of them. A stuck-up, stuffy light mage? _Eugh. _An elven queen who was completely dedicated to her people and had little tolerance for joking around? Not fun, not fun at all. Not even the quiet, controlled warrior that Aran had been would've struck his interest.

Evan is a more recent addition. He is Freud's legacy and that automatically meant that Phantom would do _something _to protect the boy, even if he really doesn't want anything to do with him. Evan is perceptive and much wiser than he appears to be, constantly projecting that happy and innocent personality to the world at large. As far as Phantom can tell, not all of that is something Evan projects. The boy is an optimist at heart.

And Eve... there's all the things that don't add up. After seeing how _tired _she was, the look in her eyes when she met his own gaze...

There's something beneath the surface that seems to linger, a sort of quiet, deep sorrow that goes deep beneath the mask. He had noticed the looks she had thrown the others when they weren't looking, and suspected he received much of the same. Like she was seeing ghosts.

It was the same way he looked at Evan and saw Freud.

Phantom isn't exactly one to be very sympathetic. He'd left that to Freud, ever the noble, kind figure, to the people who hadn't experienced the pain that came with losing the center of your world. Even so, there's something about the girl that he sees in himself, in the dark days after his love died and he'd fallen into despair. Maybe it's because she looks similar to Freud, just as Evan does, but also because she looks a little like Aria- Phantom isn't completely sure why, himself. But he's finding himself more concerned than curious.

Nobody that young should be so grieved.

* * *

**Outside the realm of feasibility? You decide. Phantom is an intriguing man, and I've seen many portrayals of him. Perhaps my tendencies towards kinder characters have made this Phantom a little softer, or maybe it's the situation. I also like to pretend that the Heroes learned to at least tolerate each others' presence. I mean, they fought in battle together. They had to trust each other, if not necessarily like each other, to be unified during combat and be effective in their efforts to liberate the world from the Black Mage. That's my opinion, at least. **

**And I decided on only one numeral for this chapter. X got a bit long.**


	6. Chapter 6

**XI.**

All around her, a battle is raging. The sound of weapon clashing against weapon and the smell of magic- greased metal- filling the air and the sight of all those mouths twisted open in silent screams as their owners fall to the ground fill her senses and she takes a step back, trembling, avoiding bullets and throwing stars littered on the bloodied ground. She can see warriors against mages. Thieves and pirates teaming up against all and turning on each other. Archers on no side except their own.

How.. how is she here? Hadn't this loop ended- stopped- _wasn't it over? _She remembers dying in this loop, dying in this very area. This loop had been her worst failure to date, something straight out of one of those horribly dark and hopeless novels that Wiz the Librarian- for some reason that he had never divulged to any living being- favored and kept in the Helios Tower Library. It almost hadn't felt real. She'd certainly drunk enough trying to forget the horrors of it.

Not that drinking had ever been enough to forget the way that Maple World- or at least Victoria Island and Orbis- had descended into senseless slaughter. Eve had locked away most of the memories of _why _and she had never had any desire to force the gap open and remember how it had all happened. All she remembered were the ones she could not force away, death rampant in nearly all of them.

It had been one of the most hellish loops she'd ever experienced, the first of them all. She's almost certain that it had been the worst one. She has tried to convince herself before that that loop had merely been a dream between her resetting the original timeline and the new one. And now she is here again, right in the thick of the fighting in a battlefield she knows far too well.

"No, no, no," she whispers to herself. Nobody hears her. Nobody can touch her- a sword has passed right through her side as the warrior wielding it lunges for a mage. A bullet phases through her chest and nails a warrior in the neck. She tries to flee, away from the slowly resurging memories of tension and mistakes and desperation, but it is of no use.

_"You have failed," _hisses a voice right into her ear and she gives a shrill yell of surprise, jumping back. It is a heavily injured Luminous, the dark magic in him running without interference, and he sneers at her. _"You have failed your mission."_

Eve tries desperately to keep her gaze away from Luminous. She knows this dream. It's happened more than once, although never in this particular venue, and a sick feeling of dread rises in her stomach. _No! It's not real-_

She's only slightly more prepared when a hand on her shoulder spins her around and she is face to face with sky blue eyes and Mercedes' blond hair, bloodstained and clumped together with sweat and grime. The beautiful queen's mouth is curled up in a snarl and she is angry, furious in a way Eve only ever sees against the Black Mage. Eve tries to step away but the grip tightens to a painful point and she is forced to cry out. _"You failed us," _Mercedes says lowly, venomously. _"You let us down. I never should have forgiven you for aiding the Black Wings. You are nothing like Freud."_

"N-no, I-" She knows they would never say this, not to her. They wouldn't... right? This isn't real- only a dream. Something punches her in the gut and she gasps for breath, doubling over. And suddenly she's pinned to the ground by a very large, ornate polearm. Aran glares down at her, expression set in tranquil fury. She says nothing and Eve knows- _knows- _that Aran is at the absolute height of rage, because that look says more than words ever will and something burns in Eve, a horrible fiery pain that she can't escape.

Aran is gone but Eve stays on the ground, unable to make herself move. She stares bleakly at the blood red sky. They are all correct, she thinks_. _Eve has failed them, failed all that she swore not to. Even in dreams they know the truth that she tries not to acknowledge about herself. _The dead see more than the living, _she remembers Freud saying after one loop. Hadn't he lost hope in her, too? He didn't believe in her, and rightfully so. How many times had she lost a loop after being so close to victory just because of one tiny mistake?

_"Well, well," _says a voice outside her line of sight. She blanches because that is Phantom's tone at his most dangerous moments, soft and velvety and containing a promise, a promise of a raging storm and merciless vengeance. The master thief comes to stand over her. His face looks almost pleasant, would if not for the pure disgust shining in his eyes.

Eve tries to cover her face, tears welling up behind closed eyelids. _Please. Rhinne, Minerva. Anyone. Not this. _Gloved hands gently pull her hands away and clasp her fingers between their own, and then his loose grip tightens into something vise-like. A pained yelp escapes her lips.

_"Why aren't you smiling, Eve?" _Her eyes snap open and a vision flashes across her sight, a dying man and his last request. The Phantom above her smiles darkly. _"You promised you would. Or don't I matter to you at all?"_

"Y-you know- just how much-" she manages to choke out behind the effort of reining in her tears, squeezing her eyes shut again.

_"Just how much you... what, Eve?" _he asks softly. She loses the battle with herself and tears trickle down her cheeks. She is sure that if she looks at him any longer, she will break. This is an angry Phantom, one who knows exactly which buttons to prod at and wounds to jab, and in its own way that is more terrifying than anything he ever did to Lotus. _"Eve..."_

She makes no answer. She can't, not to that faintly chiding tone or the tightening of his grip.

_"Eve, I'm waiting for an answer."_

_"Eve." _That is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, threatening. She whimpers.

_"_Eve!"

Her eyes snap open to Phantom's worried face, framed by the light of the early dawn. _What- _she thinks wildly, struggling. _What now-? _This is just another trick, she's sure, there's no way such worry could be genuine when those violet eyes displayed open disdain just a few moments ago-

"Eve," Phantom says again. "Eve, calm down. You're on the Lumiere." She stills. Taking in their surroundings, she realizes he's speaking the truth. Evan, in his nightclothes, lingers at the door of his cabin. A distinct expression of wide-eyed uneasiness has taken residence on his face, one that Mir doesn't share. The dragon is too busy being held by Evan.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. Slowly, Phantom straightens up from where he was bent over her before. "...Nightmare," she finally manages as she sits up and draws her arms up to hang loosely across her knees. "I'll- be okay." A blatant lie. Eve hasn't been _okay _for a very, very long time. Phantom crosses his arms, clearly disbelieving her. She stares at him steadily. Since when was Phantom so- nice? He doesn't exactly have a reason to be anything less than neutral to her, but.. Goddess, he's even _worried. _She knows that this is before he was possessed briefly by Lotus, and that before that encounter he was focused on revenge to the point of obsession.

A renegade. He'd refused to even make contact with his former comrades, revenge on Lotus becoming his primary motivation. It had been Aria's harsh rebuke that forced him to think about what he was doing and- grudgingly- join the Alliance. So what had changed him like this so early in the timeline? It hardly ever happened at this stage. Was it that he'd decided to teach Evan some self-preservation skills so that Freud's legacy didn't go off and get himself killed? Or was it something else?

She can't think of anything that would cause the thief to focus on something outside his own bitterness at this point. Phantom was Phantom and he _was _selfish, occasionally to the point of arrogance. Whatever the case might've been- escaping from his demons, actual selflessness, maybe even just his damnable curiosity- it's throwing her off and she's quickly finding herself at a loss. What does he want this time?

"You kept screaming," Evan says quietly. "And crying. You kept apologizing for something. I couldn't wake you up." He's clutching at Mir like a teddy bear, one that's just slightly too large. "You're not okay." His eyes look at her almost accusingly- _were you ever? _they seem to ask.

Her face drains of blood, attention brought back to the subject. That is confirmation enough for the two males in the room even if it hadn't been painfully obvious before. Eve's lips thin and she has a stubborn set to her jaw that Evan recognizes: she isn't going to talk.

"You used to laugh," Evan continues, suddenly angry. His face twists into a scowl that she flinches at. This pale, broken shadow of a girl isn't Eve- it can't be. _His _Eve may have always held shadows in her eyes, but the girl that's sitting up on that bed is a _shell. _He'd been so happy to see her back and awake after weeks and weeks that he'd ignored the signs. Mir looks up at him uneasily, sensing his master's anger. "Before- before," he can't bring himself to say _you fell into a coma. _"You still had _life. _You were so strong-"

He stops. The Eve he remembers was his protector, both terrifying and comforting. Now he feels no fear- no comfort, either. Evan feels strangely betrayed.

She draws back as though struck and Evan feels bad, just a little bit, but the guilt is quickly dissipated by her reply, whispered dazedly as though she is far away. "Things... things changed, Evan."

Mir shifts uneasily at Evan's rising surge of irritation and his tightening grip. "Changed enough that all you are is a _ghost _now?" he snaps, unthinkingly. "It's funny that the only person you don't avoid is Phantom," the brown-haired boy continues nastily. "All you two do is _drown _in your sorrows, seeing people where they aren't. You fit right in with each other! Maybe you'll fall in love and get married." He laughs and it's steeped in a bitterness that he wasn't aware he felt until this moment, ignoring Eve's choked noise and Phantom's start. "Birds of a feather really _do _flock together."

He breathes rapidly with the force of his anger, meeting Eve's speechlessly hurt gaze, and before he can do anything else, he turns and runs out, slamming the door behind him.

He's sure he'll regret this later. But now all he can hear is the roaring in his ears, the _unfairness _of it all resonating in every pore of his being, and the possibility that Eve might have hidden that brokenness all along and he was just too young to see it never enters his mind. "Mir, we're going flying."

"Master..."

"You didn't know her, Mir. She's different."

Mir looks helplessly at Evan. The dragonling can look back on Evan's memories and see that his master is angry enough to ignore the times where Eve would go distant and strangely unresponsive, would climb up on the roof and look at the moon like she was living in a nightmare.

Still just a young dragon, Mir doesn't know very much about the Maple World or these humans and how they work. But he does know that he loves his master, his Evan. They're of one soul and one mind and he knows how _Evan _works, even if he doesn't know much else. Evan sees his twin as older, wiser, more of a mentor than a sibling, even if he would never acknowledge it consciously. A mentor without weaknesses, a sort of omnipotent figure.

Evan is beginning to see that his sister is as human as anyone else and that brings all the fear he has hidden deep within himself up to the forefront. For a boy who so willingly set out to travel the Maple World, Mir's master holds surprisingly little grace for changes.

Mir butts his head comfortingly against Evan's shoulder. "Let's go, Master!"

Once Evan has calmed down, Mir will try to talk to him. Mir likes Eve and he's certain Evan does, too, even if his master is angry and scared of her right now. With the dragonling's best imitation of a hopeful grin, he readies himself for Evan to ride on him.

* * *

**Well, I've certainly been busy with NaNo. My apologies for the shortness. Also, I ****_know _****there must be something I can improve on. Is there anything you readers can think of? If so, please do review. I love feedback, especially if it helps me improve At any rate, it might be the end of November before I update this again. I do refuse to let it become a deadfic, but NaNo is of a slightly higher priority for the time being. **

**Also, canon!Eve in the 11/13-11/19 Cash Shop ads on GMS's site. That warms my heart. I don't think we see enough Eve in Maplestory proper or fandom... I might write a oneshot or two separate from this fic just to increase the number of available fem!Evan fics. Which is, to my knowledge, only this one. Are there any more?**


	7. Chapter 7

**XII.**

It's been a long time since she's come to the farmhouse.

Funnily enough, the Black Wings don't seem to have caught onto her existence in this loop. It's something both unfamiliar and thoroughly unsettling. Eve has always been in the thick of it all, as much a part of the storm that she unleashes as she is the center of it. The eye of a storm was said to be quiet, calm, but Eve is- was- neither of those things.

As it is, she is low-profile enough that she can still visit her childhood home. She doesn't feel comfortable in it. It chafes at her, her memories, the place where she's experienced the lowest and highest points of her life(s). When she sees it she sees _the girl, _small and doe-eyed and innocent who knew nothing of what was in store for her. And she pities that girl.

She made so many mistakes. Too many.

Eve, in the original timeline, had thought she was helping people by helping the Black Wings. It had been hard to learn the truth; harder still to make amends to Mercedes and Aran, the two most affected by her blind ignorance. She left the Maple Alliance after that, trying to distance herself from them and from the Heroes.

That girl had seen herself as unworthy of the title. She had stayed away from Victoria Island, Orbis and Ereve for a grand total of two years. Mir had found her three months into her self-imposed exile and _stayed_ with her, patiently caring for her and following every time she tried to leave him behind until she was forced to admit that really, they were better off together than apart. The two of them traveled all across the fringes of the Maple World, training and improving their skills until together they were strong enough that they would never be able to taken advantage of again.

Her mouth twists. Then they'd decided it was alright to venture back into the lands around Orbis, encountering a drunk Phantom in Ariant and somehow landed themselves with an apprenticeship under the master thief. That he'd decided not to renege on when she informed him of his drunken exploits on the deck of the Lumiere, bright and early.

She still wasn't entirely sure that he hadn't agreed just so that he could go back in the Lumiere and escape the morning sunlight. Phantom normally slept until just before noon.

Utah looks up as she approaches and blinks before giving her a warm smile. "Eve, where have you been?"

Eve shrugs, a small half-smile forming on her face at the sight of Utah so young and unworried. She wonders at the fact that there is no judgement on his face, no wondering why she hasn't come home for so long, and then she spots the woman beside Utah. Camila. Eve tilts her head, a hint of old mischievousness glinting in her eyes. As a child, cryptic remarks had been her hallmark. "Everywhere. Nowhere."

Utah looks at her bemusedly, but still smiling, and shakes his head. He waves her on into the house, turning back to Camila who has been watching their exchange with interest.

So things have gone back to normal with her eldest brother. That, at least, means no scrutiny or questions from him.

She's getting quite a lot of it from everyone else. Her facade has been slipping this loop, a little dangerously so- but she's tired, very tired, of _pretending. _It's steadily becoming sickening to have to look Mercedes or Luminous in the eye on the rare occasions they actually manage to find her and _pretend _not to know them, their little quirks and the way they move and their skill in battle and the things that make them smile.

The fear of someone discovering her secret still prevents her from outright dropping the act. She knows she wouldn't be believed. And if they did, they'd look to _her _to save all of them.

Eve's not a hero any more. That's Evan's job now and she is half-glad that it is.

Her duties are to her dead, her friends and her lover. No more. She can't afford to widen the cracks in her heart or they'll shatter beyond repair.

She stands in the doorway, hand on the frame, as she observes her mother bustling about in the kitchen. It's a sight she hasn't bothered to come see for a long time.

But as it is, she's here on business. "Mother," she calls softly, not wanting to startle her. Anna turns, blinking, and her face lights up when she sees Eve. Eve tries not to shift at the sudden rush of guilt that runs through her and she swallows uneasily.

"Eve," Anna exclaims, taking her by the shoulders and examining her up and down. She traces a new scar on Eve's hand, her untrained eyes not noticing the slight twitch her daughter gives at her touch. "Oh, you've been gone so long. How have you been? How is Evan?"

"I am well. Evan and Mir are learning much," _...all you two do is drown in your sorrows... _"and adventuring happily. They're making a name for themselves."

If Anna notices that her reply is stilted and hesitant, she doesn't point it out. Instead she steps back and smiles. "It's good to see you again. Why don't we make a cake? I'm sure Utah will be glad to have his desserts back," she adds with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes and an impish smile. Her mother has always seemed so youthful.

Baking had been their traditional past-time, when Eve had been younger and not yet capable of bearing the full weight of her memories. She'd known that not all of her memories were there, that there were blanks, but all of them but the most recent loop had been locked away to protect the still-growing mind. Her actions had been restricted by Rhinne until age fifteen.

Fifteen had been the age she was when everything had gone downhill in the original timeline. She'd been seventeen when she returned to Victoria and Orbis.

And twenty-two had been when it all ended.

Eve still has work to do- a Mystic Gate has popped up near the farmhouse and Silent Crusade procedure indicates that witnesses are to be questioned if they can be trusted- but Anna's almost hopeful look entices her to accept. So she bites her lip, and nods. "Alright."

Anna beams at her and somehow, her mother smiling at her is comforting in a way nothing has been since Evan had begun ignoring her existence.

**XIII.**

It's been a long, long week of training and people-dodging and she's relieved to escape to the safety of her little garden on Ereve. Caring for the flowers is catharthic, like battle is, and in this Eve can appreciate the irony. But soon enough she'll be ready to begin taking on the Black Wings. She's developed a training schedule for herself that maximizes the potential of her strength, the fastest possible way she can become as strong as she needs to be without sacrificing power for quicker growth.

It helps that she's neither pure magician or pure thief. She is both and neither, combining rapid spellcasting with light feet and shadow cloaking to create an almost-devastating hail of magic that rains on her enemies out of nowhere. She had been taught well, and she had had time to refine it all.

When she finally sighs and stands up, stretching out the kinks in her back that have developed from toiling over the gardening plot for hours, she realizes with a start that there is a presence here that has been here for a long while. If she hadn't consciously registered that, it only could've meant...

She turns around, and sighs.

Of _course _it's Phantom.

"What is it?" she questions, a faint hint of irritation in her voice at her private hideaway being found. But then she stops because Phantom's eyes are on the flowers, not her, and the pain is starkly visible in them.

Oh.

_Oh._

What a fool she is. How could she have forgotten? It's the day Aria died, and the flowers she cultivates are exactly like the one Phantom gave that Empress so long ago. Guilt wells up in her and she curses herself for not thinking of all the possibilities. She carefully walks out of the flowers and up to the master thief, blocking his view of the orange petals. "Phantom."

He blinks as though waking from a dream. Tentatively, she touches his arm and is surprised when he doesn't pull away from her. He merely meets her gaze, face composed but his eyes-

There's a tempest raging in them. She swallows, and makes a decision. "Let's go somewhere else."

Phantom is silent as they walk, and part of her wonders at the fact that he came to her. The Phantom that she has come to know- generally speaking, as every loop everyone's just a little bit different- wouldn't even have come out of his room on the Lumiere on this day. Probably wouldn't have bothered to get out of bed. He hadn't, even when...

It's not the time to think of that. That's for later, when she's alone and isn't faced with someone who doesn't know- doesn't remember- but wears his body all the same.

Right now he is grieving and it's her duty as someone who he seemingly _trusts _enough to appear before her (behind her, really) on the worst day of his year to at least be there for him, even if she's got enough problems on her own. Trust is a rare commodity, coming from the master thief, and maybe she's gotten too attached to this loop because she doesn't think she can bear to break it.

Eve stays away from the resting place of Shinsoo, and from the Empress's gardens and housing. Instead she makes her way to a small gazebo that's on the other corner of the small, bustling centre of the Empress's operations, hand firmly around Phantom's forearm, and sits him down. He gazes up at her dully. Somewhere during their walk from Eve's garden, all the light has gone out. She looks back until she can't take it any more, can't stand looking at normally-beautiful violet eyes dulled by the bitter sorrow of loss.

And then, "Damnit, Phantom." The brown-haired girl sits beside him and snatches his hat off, putting it on the other side of her. Phantom frowns in irritation and reaches for it, sending her a reproachful look. She blocks him.

"You're not getting that hat back until you _tell me _what has you like this," she waves her arm at his face and chooses to ignore that he could take the hat back if he wished it. "because _nobody _deserves to be drowning in their pain and you happen to be included in that nobody."

He looks incredibly reluctant, ready to snatch the hat and bolt at any moment. But she's pinning him down with her stare and somehow he finds that for once in his life he doesn't want to try all that hard to escape. He _trusts _this girl, for some reason.

Phantom is well aware that this is uncharacteristic of him. But nothing is ever the same on this day, this horrid, cursed day. The skies are dark and the world colorless and Gaston suddenly becomes unbearable. The people walk around without a care and he wants to scream, to rage, to demand why the heavens themselves do not weep for a woman who was a saint of perfect light, an angel given human form.

(Even Aria had her flaws, but Phantom loves her still and in death any man's memory makes out their loved one to be a paragon of virtue. In memories he can remember none of her flaws; does not remember the trapped hopelessness she felt in her station or the near-terrified looks as he had held her in his arms, as if it was going to end all too soon. Shinsoo was her chain and Ereve her cage. Aria was the bird and her wings had been broken.)

(She had known of her death, seen it, and tried to keep him outside the bars. But a thief goes where he pleases; Phantom had been inside long before she tried to push him away.)

So he speaks. Blankly, at first, but as he continues his emotions begin to bleed through his tightly-held control. _Aria _and _the Black Wings _and, spit out with venom, _Lotus, _all of these he mentions repeatedly and at one point he rages and then he stops, suddenly, defeated. And then he laughs, broken and bitter, and it is cut off by Eve's arms around him.

She mumbles something under her breath when he freezes, and then speaks up. "It's called a hug, Phantom." _You haven't had enough of them _remains stubbornly unsaid.

"...I know," he says back, and hesitantly returns it. Strangely- almost frighteningly- Phantom feels lighter, just the slightest bit. It still feels as though white-hot shards of pain are stabbing at his chest, still feels as though the burdens of his losses weigh down upon him like he is holding the world itself.

But Eve draws back abruptly, and looks at him, and he sees _understanding _in them. She says nothing, her expression more than speaking for itself.

He looks away, suddenly embarrassed that he has lost his composure and spilled his life story to a girl eight years younger than he. What was he thinking? It was foolish of him.

"Listen," she says, gaining his attention. His hat is in her hands, held out to him. "I said that nobody should drown in their pain. You're not allowed to feel stupid for telling someone your sorrows."

"You're fifteen," he says ruefully.

"Am I?" she challenges him, eyes again glittering in that odd way that screams _there is something you do not know about me, and I intend to keep it that way. _Phantom pauses. His common sense tells him yes, but his curiosity is saying no.

So he crosses his arms, sliding back into his persona of graceful gentlemanliness and flawless comebacks. "I suppose I'll just have to find out."

* * *

**I feel a bit uncertain about this one, but it is part of the story. More action to take place soon, and please, I'd really love to know what your thoughts are on this chapter- if I can improve it, I would love to. As for my chapterly monologue, it's short this time- I've noticed that the word count is steadily getting just a bit longer, and I hope this is all making at least a marginal amount of sense.  
**


	8. Chapter 8

**XIV.**

Eve coughs and spits up blood into her hand. The crimson liquid shines wetly against her callused hand, not so much a cause for alarm as it is an old friend come to visit again. She stares at it for a second and then throws back her head and _laughs, _wild and unrestrained, before wiping it across her robe.

It's rare that anything manages to injure her these days.

She sends a burst of mana to the affected area and the wound is healed enough that it won't bother her until later. Mid-duel healing is an invaluable skill she has only recently gained back with seven milestones of her training reached.

"Nice try, _necromancer_," she calls across the ancient, crumbling arena with an unsettling grin. "But I'm afraid you'll have to try harder than that."

She dodges a blast of wild lightning-streaked magic so casually that she might as well be mocking her opponent for all the ease she appears to do so with. The brown-haired time traveler had caught Hilla on her way to try for vengeance on Phantom for her very public embarrassment at his hands. That in and of itself was a slightly concerning event- Hilla only did that in a loop if she thought she had a chance at it.

Hilla is frustrated, that much Eve can tell simply by the woman's rather violent grip on her staff. Eve needs to end this confrontation before Hilla begins to use her full strength; she is not as strong as she would like to be to face this Commander in particular.

The shamanness Hilla had been one of the major obstacles in the Maple Alliance's way, as all the Commanders of the Black Wings were. So many resources were dedicated by Ereve to both protecting Ereve and retaking Azwan that the Cygnus Knights could only send out feelers and spies to the towns, the majority of their forces resting either on Ereve or fighting in the dead city.

Eve wouldn't have bothered with Azwan until Hilla decided to come out of her den. She was like to a hydra, her skeletons being her other seven heads. In Eve's opinion, Azwan was an almost useless venture- except for the fact that the Knights were keeping the copious amounts of undead penned in like a quarantined zone.

Fairly dancing in between Hilla's raging blows, she slowly moves her way up towards the shamanness. _Closer, closer, _she thinks, firmly keeping that unsettling grin on her face. Enemies were distracted, thrown off balance, when presented with an opponent that just seemed _off, _wrong, not-quite-there; insanity was thoroughly frightening when played well.

It helps that Eve isn't exactly _sane _in the best sense of the word, not in battle. When she forgets, she also forgets control.

"My," she croons, kicking the grin up a notch, when a bolt of magic almost grazes the sleeve of her robe. Hilla tries to conceal the perturbed expression on her face, but she is no thief. Eve can sense her sudden apprehension and unease even in the way the woman moves, despite the rage she can sense lurking beneath Hilla's beautiful exterior. "How cruel."

Hilla, warily, makes no response. It's unusual for the blustering redhead. Eve laughs wildly, sharp eyes instinctively cataloguing the flinch of the other woman. She can see that Hilla is building up mana for one of her more annoying attacks, and Eve bites back a groan when she recognizes it. _That _one was an actual threat.

Although teleportation is slower for Eve than simple speed, it wouldn't do to display too much. She fires up the spell and suddenly she's standing behind Hilla with a dagger to the shamanness' throat. Hilla freezes. "I should just kill you," she muses, and sees the fear in the woman's eyes. How... funny, that one who has killed so many should be terrified of death.

Eve isn't. She's died far too many times to be afraid of it. Freud's always waiting on the other end, that patient, blank expression that she has come to read as _disappointment _on his face. Almost casually, she kicks away Hilla's staff. It rolls and rolls, coming to a stop on a grassy little knoll that's far out of reach.

"You wouldn't," Hilla murmurs, voice low, lips barely moving. "You're a child. You couldn't stomach it-" Eve presses the dagger a little farther into Hilla's throat. A thin line of red forms.

"Want to bet?" she asks, sounding eerily like Phantom.

"Are you not Eve? What are you doing?"

Eve freezes and looks up. Luminous stands there, staff in hand, looking poleaxed at the sight of a Commander of the Black Wings being held at a standstill by such a frail-looking girl.

"Nothing," she says smoothly, flipping the dagger around and knocking Hilla out with the pommel in one fluid motion. "I've got a present for the Maple Alliance. Won't you take it?" She proffers the unconscious woman towards Luminous.

He eyes her flatly, unconvinced. Luminous is a wary one.

Why does that stare always make her feel as though she is a guilty child? Luminous only ever used it when he wanted her to do something that was befitting of a hero, in the original loop. But he doesn't know her here.

She's not the dragon master any more. Eve frowns, drags Hilla over to Luminous, and slings the woman over Luminous' shoulder. "Bye," she calls, teleporting away as fast as her mana can carry her. She has no desire to stay and see all-too-familiar heterochromatic eyes or see the face of someone who became like Utah to her keep _looking _at her like that.

"Wait-" Luminous calls, struggling to fit Hilla onto a more comfortable position on his back so that he can effectively carry her to be held for questioning. He'd meant to ask this Eve about some things, to find out for himself what had made the notoriously people-allergic master thief so interested. But it appeared that it would have to wait for another day.

The dark magic in him agrees with the girl, whispers to him to kill Hilla and make the Maple Alliance's job that much easier. But that would not be honorable, and experience has taught him that prisoners were better than bodies. Especially when someone as high up as Hilla was the prisoner.

Luminous casts some wards- nothing too serious for the light mage, merely measures that would keep Hilla from escaping immediately upon awakening. Then he turns back to where he came from, preparing to teleport to Ereve. The Resistance may have the most secure holding cells, but Luminous doesn't fancy the idea of sneaking Hilla in right under the Black Wings' noses or alerting the commander to the fact that there _was _a Resistance. Like the Silent Crusade, the Resistance is an underground operation. Its members are silent.

Eve, sitting on a floating, grassy platform, looks blankly at her hands.

She's a soldier. She has killed, she has murdered, she has maimed. All to keep others alive, losing any care she may have had for herself long ago.

But no matter how troublesome Hilla would eventually be, no matter all the atrocities Eve had committed in the name of defence... Eve had considered just killing the woman there, leaving the corpse, ridding herself of one more obstacle to her goal. She wouldn't even have felt bad about it.

She's not sure she would care now.

The last time she'd been so casual about death, she had been teetering dangerously over that very fine line between hope and despair. If Eve counts, she can dimly recall when that was- the first time when all that had been left of her was desperation to end it all. To avoid it, she'd just simply... numbed herself. She hadn't dealt with it. She'd just put it aside.

And now she's gone and gotten attached to this loop. Mutedly, Eve realizes that her hands are shaking.

She has a mission to complete. She can't-_can't-_let herself go, not until she's completed her main objectives.

Eve closes her eyes. _Minerva, Goddess, please. Rhinne, Freud. Help me._

There's no answer.

**XV.**

Eve wants to scream. As it is, her head is hurting enough trying to figure this out.

She has _found Damien, _the catalyst for the World Tree's corruption, and she has never managed that before. He has already become a commander of the Black Wings and he's close to ordering his subordinates to poison the Root Abyss that sustains the tree again. She cannot let that happen.

She cannot kill Damien. The Demon Slayer would come after _her, _damn the consequences, because he loved his family over anything and to find one member remaining only to be killed by an ally? It would be a bad situation through and through. Demon is one of the strongest mostly-mortal beings in the Maple World, someone who provided a challenge to the Black Mage at the height of his power.

There must be some way to neutralize Damien, she thinks with frustration, glaring at her small notebook as if she can light it on fire with her gaze. She chooses to ignore the approaching presence that she can sense. Nobody else but her can read the contents of this notebook.

"What did that poor notebook ever do to you?" Ah. Phantom's voice, cultured as ever, rings out crisply in the cool El Nath air. Ever since she gave him that challenge (Eve swears through and through that she only did that to get his mind off of the guilt) he's been popping up even _more _than he had before. The thief has caught her at some very awkward times.

She's only glad he hasn't yet followed her to the Root Abyss. The brown-haired girl is keeping _that _particular secret from everyone, even those of higher command than she. Questions about what she was doing there could bring unwanted attention, Maple Alliance and Black Wings alike. Eve has only recently managed to wake the Transcendence of Life, ten days before Phantom was supposed to have been briefly possessed by Lotus, which is far earlier than she's done it before.

Eve, as a rule of thumb, doesn't hold out hope for a successful loop. It's the only way to not be disappointed. But she still tries.

She always does. To do any less than what is in her power would be a disservice to the memory of all she has lost.

The first thing the Transcendence of Life did upon awakening was to look at her for a long, long moment and then solemnly proclaim that she could sense that there were faded remnants of another Transcendence's power, vestiges of something once great, sleeping in Eve. She hasn't done that in any loop Eve can remember.

_"I'm not the next Transcendence of Time?"_

_Alice laughed, startling Eve. The sound was vibrant and energetic. "No, no," the Transcendence chuckled. "No, that's impossible, silly! Rhinne already has her heirs. I mean only that she once placed her protection on you... but it was forcibly broken by something."_

_"Forcibly...?" Eve murmured, and then her eyes widened. Something clicked in her mind, connected, and suddenly she could see it. "The first loop."_

_Alice peered at her in confusion. "What do you mean?"_

_"Er, it's nothing, Transcendence." Eve shifted uncomfortably. It had to have been the Black Mage's taint that had made the Root Abyss under the World Tree so dark and gloomy, because the place she stood in now was a beautiful, comfortably warm area of greenery with flowers everywhere. "I know you must be tired," she added when Alice yawned, blinking heavily. "But please, don't fall asleep. There is an organization called the Black Wings that seeks to harm you."_

_"That group..." Alice looked upset. So she had heard something. But how? Could she have been awake during the time of the Black Wings' prime? "Are they what caused so much loss?"_

_Eve could only assume she meant when the Black Mage had still run free. "Yes, they are."_

_"I had to go to sleep because of them, you know," Alice said. "Is that why you're here? To protect me from them?"_

"Eve?" She returns back to herself to see Phantom's concerned face, which relaxes minutely upon seeing her alert and attentive.

"Oh," she says, feeling briefly as though she truly is fifteen and foolish. She's been feeling that way around him more and more. "Hello, Phantom. When did you take my notebook?" Not that she was a particularly difficult target at the moment.

He produces the notebook from one of his ridiculously numerous and strangely unseeable pockets, an enigmatic smile flitting across his face. "A thief never reveals the details of his heists." There's still that undercurrent of worry, she can tell, but he's not demanding answers out of her and that can only mean he's going to go for a more subtle route.

Eve goes for the notebook, but he moves it away from her. She sighs and gives up, leaning back against the cool snow and staring up at the sky. She's trying not to acknowledge what that worry means, coming from Phantom. It brings a flutter of warmth that should have been buried long ago to her chest.

To stave it off, she tries to think of all the major events. _If the World Tree isn't corrupted, three years until the seal on the Black Mage breaks. If it is, two years until one of Cygnus' band falls prey to the trap set by the Black Wings._

_One year until Aran begins to wield Maha again. One year and five months, without interference, until she and the rest of them reach the previous apex of their power. Six months until one of Grandis' Transcendents opens the portal between Grandis and Maple World. Three months until-_

No, it's not working. Eve bites back a groan of frustration as all the problems she has to solve circle back to her previous dilemma. She glances at Phantom. He's flipping through her notebook.

She looks back up at the heavens, exasperated. Of course Phantom would go through other people's things without their consent- he's a _thief. _It's his _job. _It is a good thing that her note-taking habits have been in her own special code since the last time someone figured her secret out, otherwise, she would be completely exposed.

"Are you going to give that back any time soon?" she questions. Amusing as it is to see him try to figure out what would appear to be meaningless scribbles to anyone else, Eve is half-convinced he'll somehow manage to decipher its contents given some time and many lengthy and numerous tomes on dead languages.

"Aa-ah," Phantom waves his finger at her and pockets the notebook again. "As I took it, it's now mine." He smiles down at her, putting all his arrogance and charm into it. "If you want it back, you'll have to steal it from me."

She scowls at him. Without warning, she lunges for the notebook. Phantom shroud-teleports away from her in the nick of time, keeping that infuriatingly annoying smile on his face. Eve stands and counters with a teleport of her own, and he shroud-teleports away again. She tries a different angle. He merely turns to face her, playfulness dancing brightly in his eyes.

Too bright. He's trying to get something out of her; words or actions that give her away, _something,_ if she could figure out _what _she would be a lot more comfortable.

"Phantom," she says warningly, a little out of breath after they've continued on like this for some time. Eve is quite ready to be _done _with this impromptu game. But it looks like Phantom isn't, and his skills will always far outmatch her in the thievery department. As much as she doesn't like it, it seems like she's stuck playing.

Her only answer is a smug little laugh, confirming her suspicions.

"That's _it," _she snarls, and throws herself at him. Phantom's eyes widen briefly, but he doesn't manage to react in time. Her weight sends him falling to the ground, falling into the snow with a puff. "Give it here," she demands, and when he fails to react, she scrabbles for the pocket she last saw it disappear into and rummages through it until she finds her notebook.

Eve yanks it out triumphantly, ignoring the small baubles that have been jostled around as a result of her searching. Phantom stares her in the eye, face almost unreadable, but she can see a hint of a blush around his cheeks.

Why would that be?

She blinks, and then looks down at the position they are sitting in. _Oh._

Eve gets off of him, not at all affected. She's not exactly embarrassed by things like that anymore. When one was fighting a battle, there was no time to worry about whether or not the position you'd landed yourself and your comrade in by saving them from death was vaguely scandalous.

She tucks her notebook away in an inner pocket of her robe and leans her back against a relatively smooth rock. The rocks of El Nath tend to be like the crags of a mountain peak, horridly uncomfortable in the best of circumstances, but this area is near an almost-frozen river. The rocks are significantly smoother.

"If you stay like that any longer," she notes to the master thief who is still laying in the snow, "you may just get soaked through."

"Of course," Phantom says, and sits up. They sit in silence. His gloved fingers twitch slightly, as if he is thinking about trying to liberate her notebook once more.

Belatedly, Eve realizes that Phantom was trying to pull a trick like she did with his hat. She is touched by the gesture, but she can't risk telling him anything more than he already knows. He's stopped asking questions, which means that he's _observing _her. That means his mind is in full gear, fully focused on figuring out the puzzle that Eve presents.

The idea of someone- perhaps especially Phantom- figuring it out is almost dangerously appealing. Her reasoning doesn't seem so sound, so strong, any more. But she has to resist; the last time someone had figured it out...

It hadn't ended well.

At the moment, it's hard to care. She is still somewhat irritated from Phantom's little theft, is still thinking a bit too hotly.

"Phantom," she says to bring herself back to the present, and waits until he looks at her. On a whim, she decides to let her guard down- just the slightest bit. It's more difficult than she expects, but she sits up straighter and looks him in the eye. "Thanks."

"For what?" he asks.

Eve shakes her head, a small smile on her lips. It's one of her few genuine ones. "That's a secret."

She doesn't miss the flash of determination in his eyes, or the almost cold feeling that races up her spine at it. It is one thing to be a puzzle.

It is another to be a puzzle that Phantom is personally interested in.

* * *

**Edited 11/27/13, reason: time travel tense trouble**

**This chapter was pretty fun to write, despite my ever-present uncertainties. Have any thoughts on it? Love it, hate it, think it could use a little work? Please don't hesitate to review! I love constructive criticism. As for the monologue: I would really like to know just who that Dream Manipulator person is. I have a feeling the upcoming updates to GMS (RED, ah, I'm excited for the new job class- storyline galore!) could go quite well with this fic, given its nature. And it's quite a hard thing to find text for the quests in Maplestory... I may just have to play through Phantom's storyline and meticulously write down the important bits to get his speech patterns and whatnot. I did that for Crow and the SC up to level 95.**

**I also happen to have a playlist for this fic, but out of that playlist I have to say Bleeding Out and Demons, both by Imagine Dragons, really fit the tone of it. Especially Demons. Ahaha.**


	9. Chapter 9

**XVI-I.**

_"Eve?" Luminous questions uncertainly, standing in the doorway to the balcony. She had disappeared earlier, abruptly leaving her companions in the dining room and vanishing into one of the many hallways of the Lumiere. "What..."_

_She doesn't turn around. The brown-haired young woman is twirling a card on one finger as she stares out at the horizon, deep in thought. Luminous strides over to stand next by her. They stand in silence, a silence that hangs heavily in the air._

_He's not sure how to speak to her, not with how she has been for the past two months. The Eve he knew seems to have vanished along with the Black Wings and the Maple Alliance._

_"I remember what I thought when I first saw him," Eve says, still not looking at the light mage. He glances at her questioningly. "'He looks so rich'. That's... that's what I thought. And now-"_

_"-it's all yours."_

_She turns to face Luminous now, blue eyes flashing under the hat that used to belong to another. It's clear that she has been weeping. "You don't understand," she says hoarsely. "Everything. He gave me all of it. Even the Leafre vault."_

_And with that, Luminous understands. "You were..."_

_"Yes," and her voice hitches. She cuts herself off. Eve turns away from the light mage once more, hat concealing much of her face, but he sees the tears that roll down her cheeks. "We were."_

**XVI-II.**

Evan bites his lip anxiously, thoughts panicky. He paces in front of the doorway. Mir is doing his best to send comforting, calming thoughts at his master, but he's not sure that it's working.

"Mir," Evan bursts out, turning around to face his dragon. Mir can feel the guilt rolling off his master in waves. It had taken a lot of coercion (Mir had even managed to convince Phantom to help him), but finally- _finally- _the dragonling had convinced Evan to at least speak to his sister. "I can't do it!"

"Of course you can, Master," Mir says cheerily. He sends the dragon-y equivalent of a grin Evan's way. "I believe in you." _Remember what I told you!_

Evan takes a deep breath, and opens the door.

There is nobody in the inn room. Only a battered-looking notebook lies on the end table next to the messily made bed. Evan's posture slumps. "She's not here..."

He isn't looking forward to the inevitable confrontation with his sister, but he's not relieved that she has disappeared. It looks as though she has left in a hurry. Evan steps further into the room, reasoning that if he can't find her, it won't hurt to find a clue or two about where she may have gone.

Phantom's teachings are sinking into his way of thinking. Evan still isn't sure whether or not it's very _efficient _for a thief to teach a magician- he would've expected to be taught by Luminous, if anyone out of their group- but Phantom is still slightly terrifying despite the almost-year Evan's spent under him and so Evan's not about to ask questions.

The master thief would never answer said questions, anyways, not to anyone. Except, perhaps, Eve.

Evan's no fool- living with Eve for the beginning part of his life ensured that. He's noticed that Phantom has a bond with Eve, one that nobody quite knows how to define, and he knows that the others (or at least Aran and Luminous) have noticed it as well. Eve is the only person outside of the Lumiere or Phantom's neverending quest for information that the master thief actively seeks out.

He actively _avoids _everyone else, except for when he has to teach Evan.

Phantom also seems to be the only one able to find her. If it hadn't been for his mentor, Evan would still be searching the lands surrounding Orbis. The brown-haired boy had been getting desperate enough to search _Aquarium, _Aquarium where only Xenon had any business of note.

"What's that?" Mir questions curiously, looking at the notebook.

"I recognize that," Evan says slowly, staring hard at the innocuous object. He's seen it numerous times throughout the years, but all that lies inside of it is indecipherable scribbles. It means something to his sister, that much he can gather, but exactly what the scribbles mean is anyone's guess.

There isn't much hope of finding anything in that notebook that he might be able to read. Still, he picks it up anyways and flips through to the most recent page.

"Master," his dragonling speaks up, looking strangely at the contents of the notebook. "I can read that."

"What? How?"

"I... I'm not sure." He can sense that Mir is telling the truth. "It still doesn't make any sense. She's saying something about time here, but..." The dragonling trails off, trying to comprehend what he's reading. Evan feels a whisper of shame over their bond. "...I don't know. Sorry, Master."

"It's fine," Evan says, brows furrowed. Why would his sister be talking about time of all things? He feels the urge to dig through the notebook, look at all its contents and learn what goes on in his sister's head, but that would be a major breach of privacy and his mother raised him better than that. "Is there anything else that you can read?"

"It looks like she's going to Ariant next," Mir offers. Evan makes no attempt to conceal his confusion at this. What in the Maple World could Eve be doing there? He's heard that his sister is working for one of the silent groups allied with the Maple Alliance- the Silent Crusade or maybe the Resistance or the Dual Blades- but the last strange happening there had already been taken care of.

That had been one of the Maple Alliance meetings where he'd only caught bits and pieces of information. He distinctly remembers Phantom kicking him under the table once or twice to keep him awake, although that may have just been because the master thief was in a bad mood due to Luminous.

In any case, it seems that he now has a new destination. "To Ariant, huh?" he muses. Then he looks up at his dragonling. "Let's get going, then."

"Right," Mir says, already dashing out of the room.

**XVIII.**

"Freud," Eve says. Somehow, she figures she should probably be surprised. The dead dragon master isn't supposed to be able to contact her during a loop, and hasn't before, although she's not sure if dreams count or not. Dreams are strange territory for her, and she gets more than enough trouble from them anyways.

But this is most definitely a dream, because they're standing on the deck of the Lumiere with the wind whipping around them and she knows by the length of her hair that she's in her old twenty-two-year-old body. She can't feel the wind, although it ruffles her hair, and she's only met with hazy blackness whenever she tries to see beyond the deck. "Are you you, or is this another nightmare?" she asks.

If it is, she has never encountered this particular one before. On second examination, this Lumiere is... twisted. The colors don't quite seem right, and there's a large, cracked mirror in place of where the door to the interior of the ship should be. A shiver of unease runs through her, especially as it seems as though Freud hasn't heard her.

What's going on?

Freud turns to look at her, clearly worried. Her uneasiness grows to become a pit of dread in her stomach. Freud was _always _calm. And if he wasn't...

"It's me," Freud says. He's just as transparent as he was when she last saw him. Absently, she wonders where Afrien is. "Eve, have you looked at yourself recently?"

"No..." Her predecessor is acting worryingly out of character.

Wordlessly, Freud gestures to the mirror. _Take a look, _he whispers mentally as he steps back, and she is surprised to find that she hears it just as she used to hear Mir. His presence fades away into the background- he is concentrating very hard on something right now, and she can't tell what. Reluctantly, she makes her way closer to the broken glass- she's got a very bad feeling about it. There's something just _not right._

The mirror shimmers when she is close enough to see herself in it, and she yelps.

Eve has looked beyond terrible before, but this is her _soul- _or at least she thinks it is. If it isn't it's the self she sees when she dreams-and she looks like death warmed over. She is pale and fatigued and Eve can see the scars crisscrossing underneath her sleeves, uncountable in their number._ Goddess above, do I really look like this?_

"What did you expect?" herself asks. "I hope you haven't broken yet," the Eve in the mirror says after she chuckles lowly and rubs at the bags underneath her eyes, peering at her counterpart in an unmistakably wry manner. "You're still relatively sane."

Eve sits down in front of the mirror. And she laughs, the wild laugh she uses in battle. Freud starts and looks at her uneasily. It sounds scarily similar to the laugh of a madman.

Of all the things she might have expected to happen, she didn't expect _this._

Mirror-Eve adopts a bland face. "And I had such high hopes, too..."

"Wait," Eve says, waving a hand and ignoring the deadpan statement. "You mean to say I now have a _split personality?" _This is directed at Freud, who opens his mouth. "Wh-"

"Not exactly," Mirror-Eve interrupts. "It's sort of like that... but more like I'm you, unfettered by your little obligations." She grins, and it unsettles _Eve, _Eve who has seen countless horrors. "Think of me as a companion. A guiding force... in battle."

"No," Eve says, and stands up and _backs _up, away away away from the stranger in the mirror. Fear tightens her throat. She knows that the path that she would follow were she totally without sanity or reservations, and it is a path that is just as bad- or worse- than the Black Mage's. Eve has learned through failure after failure that she cannot control others, cannot play God with them. "This isn't real." _You aren't real._

"Is that what you think?" Mirror-Eve asks, all levity gone from her identical figures. "Ignore me all you want, but you'll have to accept sooner or later what I am... what _we_ are. We're one and the same, just like we used to be with Mir. Freud did his best to seal the gap left by _our _dragon, but he couldn't heal us entirely without fading himself. I am what remains." She spreads her hands.

"By the Goddess," Eve murmurs, passing a hand over her eyes. Another, distant part of her thinks _through a mirror, darkly, _and she almost wants to laugh again at the improbability of it all. "I..." _am crazy, _she finishes mentally. It's almost relieving to have it confirmed.

"We are," Mirror-Eve says in agreement. "Don't worry. I won't bother you... too much." Then she glances at Freud, who is growing steadily more transparent. "Freud, I believe we're done with our little chat."

Freud nods, not enough of his presence left in Eve's dreaming consciousness to speak. He smiles at Eve comfortingly, and she is ejected from her surroundings.

**XIX.**

Eve opens her eyes. Warm sunlight dances through the trees of Ereve, and she gradually becomes aware enough to note that she is lying face-first in her garden. The memory of her dream comes back to her with a snap.

"I'm insane," she says flatly.

"Pardon me?" says a voice, and Eve looks up to see Empress Cygnus with a rather worried-looking expression on her gentle face.

_...Damn you, other me, _she hisses mentally.

She hears Mirror-Eve laugh in her mind.

* * *

**Sorry this took so long. Life has been crazy, birthday celebrations and all. It never feels like you're getting older! Let me tell you, I completely understand Dumbledore when he said that he wanted a pair of woolen socks in the first HP book. I also got Pokemon Y... It took me a total of 24 hours to beat it. Hahaha. I really like the professor. At any rate- please let me know what you think! Love it, hate it, think it could use some improvement? Also, this fic has gotten around 600 views. I'm amazed! Thank you all for reading.**


	10. Chapter 10

**XX.**

"Please allow me a moment to weep over your grave," the Crimson Queen intones monotonously, and Eve leaps back out of the range of the blast that is sent her way. She catches a hint of a scowl behind the grim, tearful expression before the Queen's faces swivel around and Eve is faced with a malicious grin.

"By the Goddess..." Eve mutters, beyond creeped out. She is _quite _ready to end this battle and get as far away from this guardian-general's domain as fast as possible. Out of all of the would-be jailers of the World Tree, she's always been far more disturbed by the Crimson Queen than any of the others. Perhaps it's their surroundings- a throne room spattered in what looks suspiciously like bloodstains- or maybe the fact that its inhabitant has a head that can be _spun around at will._

Having four faces doesn't help in lessening the unsettling factor; rather, it only increases the unease Eve feels.

_The monster is nothing, _Mirror-Eve insists (not for the hundredth time since the battle has begun), _compared to _us.

Eve frowns. _...That's..._

_You know it's true._

She ignores Mirror-Eve, dodging the rather alarming-looking wave of fire that the Crimson Queen throws at her. Eve leaps up onto one of the spikes protruding from the walls (it's a rather gruesome stylistic choice) and observes the situation clinically, keeping track of the Queen who has lost sight of her despite the spike being in plain sight. Apparently, the Queen has bad eyesight. However, if she is not careful the Queen will quickly gain ground on her and summon that _mirror _of hers.

That attack, in particular, is a nasty one. Eve would really rather not touch it, or give the Queen an opportunity to use it. It's a lifeforce-drainer. She's avoided being injured until now, but if the mirror ends up appearing and Eve touches it...

_We die, _Mirror-Eve says bluntly. She grins viciously and Eve's face moves accordingly. _And then there will be another loop. And _he_ won't know us, will he?_

The sudden lance of pain at that thought is surprising. Eve frowns, shaking off her words. She'll just have to be careful. Being distracted in the middle of a battle is about the worst thing that can happen. She focuses on her reserves of mana- if she gets a clear shot with this next spell... "This ends now."

The claw-shaped blast strikes the Queen in the neck, cutting off much of what would be blond hair if it didn't fall off in a single clump and hit the floor with a distinctly fleshy sound. The Queen howls from all four mouths and Eve lunges for her neck with a poisoned dagger she's brought along specifically for this task. Poison is relatively uncommon in this time, making it inconvenient at best to obtain- most fire magicians can create poison for combat purposes by directing the fumes or smoke created from their fire spells to react with the environment around them, and they don't really use it for anything else. Its magical properties prevent it from being used with weapons.

The two most common ingredients of now- Curse Eye fangs and Green Mushroom caps- don't give off a particularly potent amount of poison, and the more effective kinds like Green Hobi venom and the various herbal mixes haven't been developed yet. Still, she's substituted well enough with her own memory of what works and what doesn't, as well as Saffron- a master in the art of herbalism. The craftmaster resides in Ardentmill, one of the more prominent towns, which has many, many stations for any adventurer looking to craft items (thankfully, as in some loops Ardentmill doesn't even _exist_) and Eve is never one to let a resource go to waste. When she isn't completing missions for the Silent Crusade or training, she's taken to working in Ardentmill under the various craftmasters.

Admittedly, this has helped her in avoiding the various people looking for her. Those who are from the centuries past never seem to realize that Ardentmill exists despite the fact that a sizable portion of the adventuring community makes good use of the place- or perhaps it's just that she's found one of the quietest places of the bustling town. Not many people think to look in the upper room of a seemingly random abandoned building in a completely normal neighborhood.

Eve's attack connects with its intended target (albeit a little far to the right from where, exactly, she'd meant to hit) and the Crimson Queen howls before raking her fingertips across Eve's shoulder.

The brown-haired time traveler swears at the intense flood of pain, losing her focus on her mental barriers. She staggers back and looks down at her now ruined sleeve, pushing as much mana as she dares towards the three lines across her skin. A second-degree burn- she'd forgotten about the Queen's affinity with fire, and magic fire is usually coupled with poison.

Poison. "Die," Mirror-Eve hisses at the felled Queen, a disturbing coldness in her eyes, and slits the monster's throat. Tears of red that glisten with an all-too-familiar thickness form in the corners of the Queen's eyes as it gurgles. Eve wrests back control with a horrified shout which dies in her mouth at the wooziness that overtakes her.

_Oh... _she thinks, stepping backwards again. The world swims around her. _Must heal. _She reaches for her mana, but finds her reserves dangerously low. Eve fumbles through one of her pockets and manages to pull out a mana elixir, struggling with the cork. It pops off and rolls on the ground. She drinks the elixir dry in one go and quickly purges the poison from her system. Then she takes a deep breath and releases it, staring down at the dead Crimson Queen.

Its four faces all have their eyes open, staring lifelessly into an unseeable void. She grimaces slightly, and moves away from the body. Eve would've liked to have made a cleaner kill-if Damien checks in on his general, it will be clear that someone has assassinated it. In the end, the poison has had less of an effect than Mirror-Eve. Then she registers it fully- _Mirror-Eve took control._

_No..._

_Good riddance, _Mirror-Eve purrs in satisfaction, gaze upon her kill.

Eve grits her teeth and averts her eyes, turning around and fairly running for the portal. She can't afford Mirror-Eve taking control- it might ruin everything. She looks around and realizes that they have landed in the fields surrounding Henesys and turns for the Six-Path Crossway. Her inn room is in Orbis, where she had found the gateway to the Crimson Queen's domain in the first place.

_My, _Mirror-Eve comments. Eve's attention is drawn back to herself. _You seem to forget... I _am _you. I can take control whenever I like._

_That's not true, _Eve says, just a hint of desperation in her tone. _It's not. It can't be._

_Denial does nobody any good, _Mirror-Eve sing-songs, and with a mental wrest twists Eve's body to the left. She marches through monster-infested fields, throwing overpowered spells left and right at the mushrooms and pigs. _I can do _anything _I want. _With that she forces an image into their mind, one of bared skin and blond hair and gloved fingers threading through brown locks. _I could do that._

Eve flinches and forces the image- and, by extension, Mirror-Eve away. _How dare you, _she says furiously, grasping her hair with her hands as if to shake her mirror self. _How dare you even suggest something like that? _Eve will _never _use Phantom like that. Her master thief is _dead _and _gone _and this Phantom doesn't know- remember- never will. He's _different, _a _person _who she can't (shouldn't) see as someone else.

_It's no worse than anything else we've done, _Mirror-Eve laughs with a wicked grin, interrupting her. _Someone is approaching, by the way._

Eve looks up just as a familiar brown-skinned, white-haired woman enters the vicinity and looks around. The brown-haired girl smiles emptily at Aran and raises a hand in greeting. She has worked with Aran through the Silent Crusade once in this loop, and although Aran is intrigued by her (like anyone else who knows Phantom beyond the whole _master thief _persona, a group which consists of the other Heroes and Cygnus) she hasn't asked her questions. Eve finds that refreshing. "Lady Aran. Was there something you needed?"

"Just Aran, please," Aran requests, coming to stand in front of Eve. "As a matter of fact, there is. The Empress has summoned you."

"And sent you to fetch me," Eve murmurs. She wonders what Cygnus is playing at now- her last efforts at trying to help Eve hadn't helped at all, because the Empress had been distracted before she could even start by a pink-haired little girl with strange ears and lots of energy bursting into the room, quickly followed by a long-haired young man with strangely familiar eyes. Eve had taken the opportunity to escape Cygnus' stifling conference room, but she is still wondering where she has seen the man before. She doesn't have time to think about that now, however- when the Empress calls, one goes. "Thanks."

Eve teleports away in a flash, retracing her steps to the Six-Path Crossway without Mirror-Eve's influence. Left alone in the middle of the field, Aran looks around at the devastation caused by the brown-haired girl. She is a combat expert, and she can tell that no novice- or even competent- magician could achieve this level of destruction just by tossing spells around.

"There is more to her than it seems," Aran murmurs. Maha emerges from the polearm she wields in her hands.

"She's suspicious," he says, arms crossed. "Don't trust her."

"I feel like I know her," she explains to her spirit companion, frowning. "But I do not know how such a thing is possible."

"...I don't like it," Maha insists. "The air around her is heavy." He waves his hands as if demonstrating the effect, and Aran sighs and shakes her head. It's a mystery for another day- she is not like Phantom, who will pursue the subject of his curiosity to the ends of the earth. She has priorities, and interrogating a child- however oddly powerful- is not one of them.

"Let's go see Lirin," Aran decides. "She said she had something for me."

"You just want to be back in the cold," Maha mutters rebelliously. Aran shrugs, not arguing, and they depart.

* * *

**I apologize for the wait and the brevity of this chapter. I've encountered a rather difficult personal issue that's caused me some serious doubt and is still ongoing... doesn't look like it'll be over any time soon, either, but I'll do my best to keep a better update schedule. You guys hear about the new Pirate Hero in KMS, Eunwol? He wields a knuckle and he's accompanied by a member of the Anima race known as Liang-yi. You can find the information on the orangemushroom blog just by searching it up on Google :) Anyways, I would love to know your thoughts. Think this could use a little improvement? Love it? Hate it? Don't hesitate to review!**


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